his year has been so important. It was the proverbial coming back to life. It was a lot more buoyant and colorful than the previous two years. It was the year we only saw maybe two Turkey vacation stories on our Instagrams every couple of months instead of the Turkey upon Turkey upon Turkey stories and pics of last year.

That isn’t the only thing that stood out to us, though.

2022 marked the return of cinema in Pakistan. Unlike the one or two productions that went up at the turn of 2021-22, summer ’22 saw the release of multiple movies and segued into a slightly quieter pre-fall with fewer releases with higher impact.

Award shows were a thing again, and there were at least two fashion showcases we had on our radar. We’ve loved how the imaginations that brewed during the world’s timeout from public interaction just burst forth in an expression of everything.

While not all of us will follow all entertainment closely, even from the periphery one could tell that Coke Studio 14 has set the bar higher than ever for future seasons. This is not to say previous seasons weren’t excellent; simply that the Xulfi-Abdullah Siddiqui duo managed to take everything musically Rohail Hyatt had established for the show, and built layers around it to take it forward.

Music also saw an incredible feminine force in the last year. We’ve always had immensely talented musicians who happen to be women, but in the last couple of years, women are claiming their space with more ease than ever.

In case you didn’t notice because it’s become such an accepted and common part of our everyday language, there is a lot more openness to how we approach sharing information. Everyone has an individual platform to express exactly what they’re thinking any second of the day, and the thing is, everyone has an audience, and if the audience doesn’t like what is being said, they can scroll on.

This also means we’ve become part of a lot of celebrity drama for absolutely no reason. We’ve been subjected to more viral trends than we bargained for. We’ve had to contend with opinions we find distasteful when it comes to the drama and trends.

But most of all, because everyone is everywhere, and everywhere is accessible all the time, every debate becomes more heated, more contextual, more us and them than it needs to. Sometimes all you need to do is enjoy the film, enjoy the song, laugh at the meme, and move on.

To that end, Instep would like to bring attention to the achievements everyone kind of ignored in favor of intelligent analysis, and sometimes that of the pseudo variety. Please guys, we don’t need that energy in 2023, ‘k?